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Looking after yourself

By Skean Dhude

Simply making sure you are well fed and watered isn’t necessarily going to keep you nice and healthy. You have to keep yourself and your working areas clean as well. You have to make sure your toilet area is away from your living accommodation and that you sanitise yourself after going to the toilet or before you make or eat any meals. All this will help but there are no guarantees.

Being clean and fresh will not only keep your body in better condition but also improve your wellbeing

The world will be a much more dangerous place without the common medicines and sanitation techniques available now. Just think how many cuts have become infected or inflamed over your life whilst we live in a very clean and sanitised environment. Now imagine an environment where you don’t have the water to wash properly or the disinfectant to clean up. Disease will become much more common and we will be back to the time when even a simple cut could kill you. You don’t want that.

First of all you want to ensure your personal hygiene. Simple stuff like soap, toothpaste, toothbrushes, disinfectant and bleach are cheap and will last a long time plus they don’t take up much space for enough to last a significant time. They can be used to keep you and your environment clean.

Next up is first aid, as well as the books we recommend that everyone has, see here under First Aid and Medical, we also should have a basic list of supplies. At the minimum aspirin, ibuprofen, eye wash and bath, elastoplasts, bandages, safety pins, blankets, tweezers, thermometers, torch, sterile gauze and pads, cotton buds, balls and wool, paracord, duct tape, nitrile gloves, more bandages, burn dressings and similar, steristrips, alcohol, calamine lotion, oil of cloves, rehydration sachets, vaseline and face masks. Not forgetting calpol if you have kids. This kit should be enough for an unskilled person to do the basics and stop the small issues becoming larger, and potentially fatal, ones. It isn’t the same as A&E but you will have to make do unless you have medical training. If you do then stock up with much, much more and you will be highly sought after. Myself, I’m stocking up what I can.

Finally, general sanitation. Recycle your urine and put the rest of your waste in a composting toilet. I have a camping toilet for after an event for when I’m keeping my head down but I want a composting toilet for long term. Alternatively you are looking at digging toilet trenches well away from your camp and your water sources.

Many of these items can be made later an event to ensure a long term solution, however in the medical area most of these can not be replaced. Store plenty and use wisely those irreplaceable resources. The frustrating part is that you just don’t know what events can happen in the future any more than you can now, so you just can’t stock up efficiently. Just stock up what you can fit in. It won’t be wasted.